A Snob just does not understand the finest unwritten rule of the club of elitists: you do not disparage anyone who does not meet your evidently extraordinary but eminently expendable standards

Quick tip: Elitists consider themselves to be superior, snobs make it painfully evident that others are inferior.

People to impress: Socialites, socialists, social scientists.

Elitist: You have glimpsed her through the fine air of superiority that clings to her like heirloom French chiffon. She knows her 1998 Petrus and has probably stashed away a first growth — or at least has serious daydreaming designs on it. And if you prod her, she would take you through her Pedro Almodovar and Hayao Miyazaki collections. She is an elitist.

Every elitist knows her calling: a compelling, finely cultivated need to search for the best, to belong to a group of those with uber-tastes. But the modern elitist is an evolved animal, an omnivore: she has to have a passion for the high-brow, of course, but she should also have the talent to sniff out the not-so-high-brow and elevate it, appropriate it in a dazzling display of wit that contains just a sentence, or even better an exclamation that you would see dancing in the air. So she would stick up for Skyfall, even as she quietly wonders what made Bond go for the Heineken.

Snob: You have seen him — the one who rolls his eyes when his cognac does not saunter in in a balloon snifter and then refuses to take a sip from that abominably inappropriate glass. He aims to be an elitist — and he is almost there. But he does not know the finest rule of the club: you don't disparage anyone who does not meet your evidently extraordinary but eminently expendable standards.

Snob crosses the line between quiet bemusement and public outcry. An elitist won't dream of serving the guests tea from a bag, but a snob has a snidey, putdown tea joke at the ready for the host who asks him to choose between herbal and oolong bags. He is also a snob who would rather not share another drink with the new acquaintance who follows "Hello" with ample praise for Manohar Kahaaniyan — without knowing that the pulp aficionado may just have been an evolved elitist.